Friday, June 22, 2012

While many a novel that’s promoted as “inspirational” turns out to be a
bunch of hot air, it’s certainly not the case with How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New
Ideas, a collection of case studies compiled by author, journalist and philanthropist
David Bornstein; a compelling, insightful and genuinely moving book that will
definitely serve as a call to action for many a reader seeking incentive to act
upon their idealistic notions.

The book opens with a forward that details the history of Ashoka, a global
organization that sponsors and promotes social entrepreneurs, thereby promoting
social justice worldwide. Since it was founded by Bill Drayton in India in
1980, Ashoka has expanded to over 60 countries, and served a wide variety of
causes; ranging from providing solar energy to a village to Brazil to helping
AIDS patients in South Africa to funding college educations for underprivileged
students in the United States. Using examples such as Gandhi and Florence Nightingale,
Bornstein uses this forward to identify common traits and practices of social entrepreneurs,
their means of fulfilling their goals, and the lasting impressions they made
not only in their chosen causes but on the minds of future generations of
dedicated activists.

These remarkable true stories feature philanthropists not only from all
around the world, but from all walks of life. Some pursue their charitable businesses
as full-time professions, such as Klaus Schwab, founder of the World Economic
Forum; some acquire wealth and then pursue worthwhile causes, such as Bill
Gates and Warren Buffet; others go into it out of necessity, such as Erzsébet
Szekeres, a single mother in communist Hungary who fought to provide a better
life for her handicapped son. Yet they are all determined and admirable
individuals united under Ashoka by the common goal of making a difference, and
in that they are at once familiar and relatable.

According to Bornstein, the prospects of the field of social
entreuprenuership are optimistic, as it has seen a drastic increase in the past
twenty years, and will only continue to expand. Currently, over 250 colleges
and universities—including Harvard, Yale, Stanford and NYU—offer courses in the
subject. Indeed, the Acumen Fund, which supports aspiring social entrepreneurs,
has received over one thousand applications within the past two years, as have
many similar organizations.

If you’re a reader looking for inspiration, David Bornstein is certainly
a writer worth following. He’s also the author of The Price of a Dream: The Story of the Grameen Bank; and his
articles have appeared in publications such as Atlantic Monthly and the New
York Times. He has co-written To Our
Credit, a PBS documentary about combating poverty, and has founded
Dowser.org, a website dedicated to discovering new entrepreneurs, and encouraging many more.

Friday, June 15, 2012

Fantasy and sci-fi lovers alike ought to be happily acquainted with
Philip Pullman, a master genre-bender who boldly takes readers on a
kaleidoscopic magical odyssey, complete with talking animals and portals to
other worlds. The Golden Compass—also
known by its British title, Northern
Lights—is a stunning work of creative vision, and as intellectually
engaging as it is fun and exciting.

Twelve-year-old Lyra Belacqua inhabits a world in which human souls
manifest themselves outside their bodies in the form of dæmons:
shape-shifters who take on animal forms. She and her dæmon, Pantalaimon, grow
up in Jordan College, raised by scholars, professors, and servants, until the
arrival of her enigmatic uncle, Lord Asriel, an explorer who experiments in
theology. Upon overhearing a secret meeting involving a quest for mysterious
magic particles known as Dust, Lyra is given a golden compass-like device
called an alethiometer—or a “truth teller” with prophetic powers—and introduced
to the beautiful and mysterious Ms. Coulter, a scholar whose arrives at the college
around the time children in the area begin to disappear. When Lyra’s friend
Roger goes missing, she sets out to find him and is soon drawn into a dangerous
and complicated scheme involving secret experiments that transcend time and
space; a journey that takes her around the world on boats, zeppelins, hot air
balloons, and the back of an armored bear.

Just as Pullman’s magical world draws comprehensively on a multitude of sources—mythology,
theology, astronomy, magic, and politics—it also offers a diverse cast of
characters. There are tribes of witches, including the witch queen Serafina
Pekkala; a nomadic ethic group known as gyptians, whom Lyra travels with for a
time; and talking armored bears known as panserbjørne;
which includes the bear prince, Iorek Byrnison, who becomes Lyra’s trusted
companion. The villainous ones in the assorted collection are the members of
the General Oblation Board, known as the Gobblers, who kidnap children and
perform experiments on them in the name of religion.

The compelling driving force of the narrative is Lyra, a willful, vivacious
tomboy whose brazen disregard of authority serve her well on a journey that
tests her courage and resolve; yet she’s also equal parts clever and
compassionate. Fittingly, her talent for lying—which gets her out of many a
life-threatening situation—eventually earns her the nickname Lyra Silvertongue,
bestowed on her by Iorek Byrnison.

A writer like Pullman does not adhere to the confines of genre. Just as
Lyra’s expedition transcends time and space, The Golden Compass defies easy categorization, and its audience is
certainly not limited to children and young adults. This also applies to the
book’s two sequels, The Subtle Knife and
The Amber Spyglass.

Friday, June 8, 2012

Although historical figures are often ripe for fiction, doing justice to
them often poses a challenge for many an author, thereby making historical
fiction somewhat of a hit-or-miss genre. With Theodora: Actress, Empress, Whore, British author Stella Duffy sets
out to chronicle the life of Theodora, the sixth-century actress and prostitute
turned Byzantine Empress, and somehow manages to downgrade a remarkable life
story into a cheap, plodding Harlequin novel.

This unabashedly bawdy novel begins with Theodora’s childhood as a
destitute young actress and dancer, and chronicles the procession of her career
to prostitute to governor’s concubine to, eventually, the wife of Emperor
Justinian I. During this time she makes a name for herself as the biggest star
of the Hippodrome of Constantinople, travels to Africa, has a spiritual
awakening in the middle of the desert, and undertakes secret missions for the Orthodox
Church. At times, throughout her ordeals, she must work her way through the
various political and religious disputes throughout the Roman Empire, such as
the rise of Chalcedonian Christianity, and the clashing of the two political
parties: the Greens and the Blues.

Contrary to what the title would have readers believe, we are only
granted a look inside her life as an actress and as a whore; not so much as an
empress, as the novel comes to a screeching halt with her marriage to
Justinian. The majority of the book—which is everything leading up to her
marriage—is weighed down by a lack of direction and character development. In
portraying several historical figures as one-dimensional cartoons whose actions
are purely driven by exposition, Duffy has reduced Theodora—who was perhaps the
most influential and powerful woman in the history of the Roman Empire—into a lifeless,
generic tart.

Duffy’s writing style is long-winded and digressive, as she makes
excessive use of run-on sentences as a means of prose construction. That,
coupled with the fact that she seems to be making it up as she goes along,
turns the novel into a rambling sequence of events with a contrived, tacked-on
ending that leaves loose threads untied, and questions about Theodora’s life
unanswered.

In short, this pulpy romance novel does not do justice to the intriguing
historical figure that is Theodora. Those interested in her story may be better
off seeking nonfiction works such as The
History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by 18th-century
British historian Edward Gibbon, or the more recent Women in Purple: Rulers of Medieval Byzantium by King’s College
London professor Judith Herrin.